2018-01-21

I bought this Casio CFX-9800G calculator in 1995. It's been through everything with me, even, apparently, my college electronics courses (per the "ELEC 120 Progs" thing I found on it):

I bought it because it was about 2/3 the price of the competing TI-81 calculator that was "required" for whatever math class I'd found myself sucked into that semester (I think statistics) and because it was the first calculator I'd ever seen with a color display, even if it was only 3 colors (Orange, green and blue). My math teachers hated anything that wasn't Texas Instruments, because they'd received formal training and supplies from TI. Of course, this extra annoyance was a bit of a pride point for me, and the one kid with his HP 48G.

Now, it sits on my desk at home for calculations that exceed the easy capacity of bc(1) and xcalc. Poking through the program menu, I ran into a few games and helper scripts I've written over the years. Some were password-protected.

It was about this time that I recalled buying the data cable and software. Somehow, I still had the CD on a spindle of old commercial software (among gems like Need For Speed SE, MechWarrior II, and CheckPoint Firewall-1 4.0) and my cable stash is organized enough that it was easy to find in the bucket labeled "Strange proprietary serial cables". One problem: Windows 10 doesn't like 25 year old Casio software. Rebooting my OpenBSD netbook into Windows 7 Starter Edition (ugh) did the trick, though. Add a USB/Serial dongle, and we're off!

I connect the cable, put the Casio software into "receive" mode, then do a data dump from the calculator itself. Things are looking up! Unfortunately, I can only see that these programs exist on the calculator, I can't do much with them aside from delete them from the archive.

I open the file in Notepad++ for giggles, and I'm pleasantly surprised. This whole catalog is ASCII. And I also found a password I haven't used since the late 90s.

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HiR is what happens when 1990s-era e-Zine writers decide to form a blog. Most of us hail from the Great Plains region of the United States.

Ax0n, HiR founder and editor-in-chief is an information security specialist currently working in the luxury goods industry.

Asmodian X joined HiR in December 1997 and currently works as a web developer and SysAdmin in the education industry.

Frogman has been on board since May 1998 and has many technical passions. When not experimenting with obscure hardware, he can be found leaping from one rooftop to the next, making the world his office.

TMiB has also been helping since 1998. Also our resident Physicist and go-to guy for xkcd jokes we don't get, The Man in Black currently works in the Internet industry in an east-coast data center.